Cloaking tech
- Thread starter flottanna
- Start date
Care to elaborate? I don't seem to remember this.
I was wrong. I mis-remembered Balance of Terror.
Okay. As far as I can remember the first time the Klingon's have the tech is in The Search For Spock. And that was originally supposed to be a stolen Romulan ship (Not sure if that ever entered canon)
It didn't.
Anyways, the midseason finale solved the Klingon cloak problem, as they've figured out how to detect the ships now thanks to the discovery.
It probably just takes the Klingons a few decades to advance the tech to get past that problem.
It still contradicts TOS where Kirk and Spock have never heard of a cloak working before.
So yeah I guess that fits into Canon then. Maybe it's just an odd decision. Seems like an easy thing in the canon to avoid miss stepping. Seems to me they could have gotten the same effect by not having the Klingon's use cloak, but instead they use some type of dampening field around their ship that makes them undetectable. And the Discovery crew is forced to fight on sight alone. Then at the end of the arc they could quickly find a way to track it making use of the field impossible for the Klingon's.
Just thought of that. Not the best idea but to me it seems better then the Klingon's with cloak.
A cloak that can be tracked is not a solution to anything. It still makes things invisible to the eye, which not only makes Kirk and Spock look like idiots in "Balance of Terror", but is a darn handy technology to have and use, calling for an explanation as to why it isn't used more often.
There never was any problem with Klingons cloaking: no part of Trek says Klingons can't make themselves invisible. The subject doesn't arise in ENT (where we may well assume Klingons indeed can't become invisible yet, although our heroes know other species can), and it doesn't arise in TOS (where Klingon invisibility could be taken for granted, as no plot hinges on it not being a thing). And in the TOS movies it's already considered mundane.
The only "problem" is with why Kirk and Spock would be unfamiliar with invisibility as a thing in "Balance of Terror". And that's a problem specific to that episode, not to the other episodes of Trek.
Timo Saloniemi
There never was any problem with Klingons cloaking: no part of Trek says Klingons can't make themselves invisible. The subject doesn't arise in ENT (where we may well assume Klingons indeed can't become invisible yet, although our heroes know other species can), and it doesn't arise in TOS (where Klingon invisibility could be taken for granted, as no plot hinges on it not being a thing). And in the TOS movies it's already considered mundane.
The only "problem" is with why Kirk and Spock would be unfamiliar with invisibility as a thing in "Balance of Terror". And that's a problem specific to that episode, not to the other episodes of Trek.
Timo Saloniemi
There is very little in life that I would care about less than explaining canon changes. Just tell a good and entertaining story. I think it comes from my childhood watching Doctor Who classic where it seemed they could not have cared less about making sure all of the various futures the Doctor visited lined up.
I will always think that character and story is most important. Which is why I am still watching Discovery. If I only cared about Canon i would have turned it off the second a Klingon pooped up. I just think there a certain things like this cloaking thing that are easy to adhere to. It's not like the writers missed a single throwaway line that Tukok said about Vulcans in one episode. That I would understand not staying in Canon.
It's like Spock's Sehlat. That animal did not have to be a part of canon. It could have been a throwaway line for a joke like it was in the episode. But now writers have brought that line back and used it to make the canon richer. Sometimes when the writers take care like that it's nice.
1) What needs to be explained? They gave us an amazingly detailed breakdown of how it works. In fact, it's the first time in Trek history they have ever actually bothered to explain how cloaking devices even work.
2) WHAT canon change? Cloaking devices have been around for a hundred years by now. This is apparently the first time the Klingons started using them, which is an event we never saw before.
They won't explain anything. Besides, in "Balance of Terror" cloaking devices were theoretical and ENT already gave us Xyrillians, Suliban and Romulans using them.
"All of the fans always assumed that Klingons don't have cloaking devices at this time period" has nothing to do with characters or story and is therefore unimportant.
And if it turns out Spock didn't actually have a Sehlat but did, in fact, have a pet corgi that he found amusing because its physical structure was the result of generations of totally illogical breeding choices but the dog still seemed to enjoy life despite it all... can you give me a compelling reason why this apparent canon violation should matter to anyone?
The specific time they acquired it, or when Starfleet became aware of them having it, was never established. The first time we (the audience) see a Klingon cloaking device is in Search for Spock, but we first hear about it in the animated series as something Kor's ship has (but it's not a surprise to Starfleet then). Years later in DS9 Kor reminisces about being one of the first Klingons to use it. I like to think the fact that Kol is in the House of Kor is not a coincidence.
But it doesn't make them invisible to sensors, which are invariably the "eyes" being used to observe anything from aboard a starship, bar having to look out a window with an antique telescope. The reason it isn't used more often is cited in the episode: "the power cost is enormous." Not only could the Romulan BoP not fire weapons under cloak, but when engaged it rendered her limited to impulse power, and she couldn't see the Enterprise any better than they could see her—i.e. only as a blip that could be mistaken for a sensor ghost.
Though it presents no problem with respect to DSC, since we may readily presume it took place during this very conflict, Kor tells of the cloak being a new piece of technology to the Klingons at the (there unspecified) time he and Kang battled the Federation at Caleb IV in "Once More Unto The Breach" (DS9).
(Of course, he was going senile at the time, referring to his ship the Klothos as an "old D-5 cruiser" though it certainly didn't look like the design of that designation seen in ENT, but rather more like what we used to call a D-7 before DSC, when we saw it in "The Time Trap" [TAS]—where it explicitly had a cloaking device known to Kirk and Spock. Still, maybe the confusion about dee numbers is more on the Our Heroes™ part, as suggested by the original in-joke that gave rise to them and the fact that no less than three different designs in three different episodes have now been cited as falling under one! And of course, it's always possible Kor commanded two successive Klothoses just as Kirk and Picard did two Enterprises or Sisko did two Defiants.)
Also, Klingon invisibility is briefly a plot point in "Elaan Of Troyius" (TOS), though not any lack of it thereto.
I just re-watched it recently, and however one parses "theoretically possible" and such on the page, in actual manner they really don't give the impression of being all that surprised or befuddled by or incredulous of cloaking as a thing. That's mostly about how the intruder could pulverize an entire asteroid base with a single shot, even if that may or may not be a bit of an inconsistency in itself. The cloaking stuff is all handled very matter-of-factly and taken in stride, with the lines in question being more exposition for the audience's sake than anything.
Especially when put together with "Charlie X" (TOS) and "The Enterprise Incident" (TOS), I think it's clear enough that what's only theoretical at that point is a cloak that can't be detected or tracked and is simultaneously compact and power-conserving enough to be of practical use on a ship other than one operated by super-advanced non-corporeal beings-of-legend like the Thasians. Ultimately, neither the Romulans in "Balance Of Terror" (TOS) nor the Klingons in DSC prove to actually possess such a thing. (And though the Rommies later have one by "The Enterprise Incident" [TOS], it is stated that soon enough it too will be twarted, and the game of one-upmanship shall continue.)
-MMoM
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I've just now realized that the Klingon designs in Discovery are probably extrapolations of the more elaborate and ornate designs in Enterprise. Several times we've seen a long-necked Klingon battlecruiser that looks like it could be a descendant of the Klingon Raptor from "Sleeping Dogs."
